Social Network Recipes

By
Eric Griffith24 May 2014, 3:01 p.m.

Social Recipes

Facebook Pic Matches on Twitter This is among the top recipes used on IFTTT because it's seriously cool. Use it to make your avatar match on both Facebook and Twitter. (Unfortunately it doesn't work in the other direction.)

Facebook Status to Twitter This is the most useful IFTTT recipe in existence for those who hate cross-posting on the biggest social networks. You can also use it in reverse.

Tweet to Tumblr Another cross-posting time saver: ensure all your tweets end up on your Tumblr. (Combine it with the above recipe and you only have to post once to hit all three services.)

Google+ to Facebook More cross-posting greatness: This one puts your Google+ posts on Facebook. The difference is, for some reason Google+ is not supported on IFTTT. It takes advantage of the RSS feed generated by your G+ status updates.

Text to Facebook You could open up your Facebook app to post a status, but this trick works with any mobile handset—just label the message with a designated tag (like "#FB") and it'll post to Facebook as your status.

Voicemail to Facebook IFTTT provides a phone number you can call to leave a voicemail. With this recipe, when you leave the message, IFTTT transcribes it, posts it to Facebook, and provides a link to an MP3 file of the message.

Post Pre-arranged Status Updates Don't have time to make that once-a-year post to say "Happy New Year!"? IFTTT's own Date & Time channel can help you set it up to go out without effort. Modify it for any message; turn it into a direct message to someone else on Twitter (just put a "D" in front) or an SMS text to a loved one. This way you'll never forget to say "Happy Anniversary."

Read Tweets Later If you like to "favorite" tweets to refer to them in the future, this recipe sends them all to Pocket, the read-it-later service, so you can click the links and, well, read them later.

Send Thanks to New Followers Whenever you get a new follower on Twitter you get an email notification. If it comes via Gmail, create a filter for the message that searches for the string "is now following you on Twitter!" Gmail can label it, and IFTTT will monitor that label. When it sees a new message, it sends that person a tweet saying "Thanks!"

Feedly to BufferBuffer is a great Web app for sending status updates to multiple social networks at a pre-set time. With this recipe, you can tell Buffer to post a status about any article you save with the Feedly RSS reader.

Save Tweets to Sheets Want a searchable backup of every tweet? This recipe appends everything you post on Twitter to a new row in a Google Drive spreadsheet. Even retweets and replies can be included. Check out the syntax used by IFTTT here; it includes three vertical bar/pipe characters (''') to indicate a new column should be used.

About the Author

Eric narrowly averted a career in food service when he began in tech publishing at Ziff-Davis over 20 years ago. He was on the founding staff of Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine (all defunct, and it's not his fault). He's the author of two novels, BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale"--Publishers' Weekly) and KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. He works from his home in Ithaca, NY. See Full Bio